Burlesque Gestures and Bodily Attention: Phenomenologies of the Ephemeral in Chantal Akerman

Abstract

This is a chapter about my body. It is a chapter about my body at rest, and my body at play. My body is insistently present when I sit, almost motionlessly, viewing, re-viewing, scrutinising and attending to frame-by-frame, fraction-of-a-second encounters with a film by Chantal Akerman. My body is also there when I observe, participate, hesitate, meander, wonder, shift and perambulate through an exhibition, also by Chantal Akerman. The static and moving body that is mine is the place from which my attentive regard for these films and moving image installations emerges and is made tangible in the visual, emotional and spatial environments of viewing.